Browsed byTag: farming

They say good help is hard to find these days, and for a man of discriminating requirements it was also hard in the early 19th century. I became aware of the great 19th century journalist, politician, and agrarian William Cobbett last year while reading Farming for Self-Sufficiency, which used his amusing quotes as the epitaph for almost every chapter. Cobbett was an early advocate of going back to the land, and even at the beginning of the 19th century…

“Now, the sort of self-sufficiency which I wish to treat in this book is not the old, pre-industrial self-sufficiency: that of the illiterate peasant or hunter who has never heard of anything else. That kind of self-sufficiency is, for better or worse, on the way out. What I am interested in is the post-industrial self-sufficiency: that of the person who has gone through the big-city-industrial way of life and who has advanced beyond it and wants to go on to something…

When North America was first settled there was rich, thick, virgin soil all the way from the Eastern seaboard through the Great Plains. This incredible fertility was a major driving factor in the country’s unprecedented economic growth. However, the soil has been taken for granted, plowed, shredded up, worn out, washed away, and covered in chemicals- left as little more than a sterile growth medium. When the famous Dust Bowl took place much of the damage had happened in just…

“Eliminate the Terms ‘Tillage’ and ‘No-Till’” – The No-Till Farmer This is wonderful commentary on the dangers of of rigidly sticking to past ideas and terms about gardening and farming, which are constantly being improved by knowledge and technology. This is a mistake I have made in the past, especially with a determination to use zero tillage in my beds. For my Fall garden I did properly hoe out the soil to a loose consistency. And lo and behold my…